


Revolver

by psychoanalyze_this



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 09:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1738916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychoanalyze_this/pseuds/psychoanalyze_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd played the call girl, the prostitute, the blushing schoolgirl, the trophy girlfriend, the fianceé, even the wife...but never herself, never Natasha. She spent so long burying herself under layers and layers of things that just weren't her that she'd forgotten what having relationships simply for the sake of connecting with another person felt like…But there was Clint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revolver

“Did you get one of these too?” Natasha asked, gesturing to the postal box brimming with paperwork that had been left on her desk. 

“Unfortunately, yeah.” Clint told her as he leafed through the top sheets of paper in the box. “And I already talked to Coulson. We actually have to do all this shit.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Natasha sat down in her chair exasperatedly.

“I know.” 

“This is like eight months worth of paperwork.”

“I know.” Clint perched on the edge of her desk, scooting the box over a few inches with his hip. “What time are you here ‘till?”

“I’m in training until 5, why?” 

“Why don’t you come over to my place when you’re finished? I’ll make a metric fuck-ton of coffee and we can get this all done.” Clint tried not to sound too hopeful when he asked suggested it to her. 

“Yeah, that sounds good. But, I should get going.” She said, glancing up at the clock in the room. “See you tonight.” She called over her shoulder as she left Clint for the training rooms. Leaving him with a small smile on his face until he got up to leave as well, he had a meeting with Fury. 

So it’s been five years since Natasha joined SHIELD, five years with Clint as a partner. Most of those five years had been good, well as good as things can be with Natasha. The first few years were pretty rocky, and arguments between them still came to blows more often than Clint would like, but they were largely good. Until last year when Natasha had gotten kidnapped by the very organization she’d left when she was still a teenager, The Red Room. She’d been tortured and starved within an inch of her life for month before SHIELD could get to her, but she’d lived and that was an incredible feat all by itself. 

Her recovery was long and hard. Getting her body back to health and into fighting shape was frustrating for her, and agonizing as well. She’d train until her body collapsed from exhaustion and she was coughing up blood onto the training mats. 

She danced a lot to help get her back in shape, strengthening and stretching her muscles and joints. The rigorous ballet regimen from her youth was still fresh in her mind as she forced herself en pointe again every time she fell until her shoes were stained red. There were times when she’d slam into the unforgiving wood floor, unable to break her fall in time and unable to pull herself up again, and, instead of being greeted by an electric shock or being dragged back onto her feet by her hair as she’d remembered, Clint would be there. He’d call her an idiot as he carried her to a chair and helped her out of her shoes, working very hard not to tear at the broken skin of her feet even more, then he’d bandage up the worst of the injuries as best he could.

That was their routine for a long time. Once Natasha had been cleared for active duty they’d been sent on a deep-cover mission for about six months to gather intel, well it was supposed to be longer than six months but Natasha got bored and the whole thing kind of collapsed on itself. But, it was weird for them, new territory. They had posed as a married couple and had more than one groundbreaking moment in their relationship. 

Natasha was physically recovered but she still carried the weight of everything that had happened to her and the weight of her past was fresh in her head and she didn’t deal with it quite as productively as she could have. It took her nearly dying of an overdose of antidepressants until she really began to move on and Clint had talked about his own past more openly than he ever had before. 

Then they got back home, well back to New York, and Natasha was assigned to interrogate a Red Room employee the’d gotten their hands on and that had had mixed results. On one hand, Natasha was sucked back into her past and she tortured and killed a man in a terrifying and gruesome manner. On the other hand, Natasha and Clint got around to deciding that maybe, just maybe, there was something more than friendship between them. Though they hadn’t yet gotten around to discussing what their relationship actually was now, they were content just to let things be. And has he walked through the winding halls to Fury’s office he wondered just how long things would and could stay this calm between them. 

“Agent Barton, take a seat.” Fury didn’t even look up as Clint entered the room until he was took a seat. 

“You wanted to see me, sir.” It was sort of a half-question, half-statement. Fury rarely wanted to see either of them these days. 

“You are aware of Romanoff’s interrogation, aren’t you?” That definitely wasn’t actually a question. That was the tone of voice Fury always used when Clint had broken one or more rules and he was just kind of tired of dealing with it. Not unlike a hopeless parent with a rebellious kid, no surprise, just disappointment. 

“Yes, I am.” 

“And you are aware that that particular activity was highly classified?” _Oh boy,_ Clint thought as he settled in for a long and unpleasant conversation with his boss. 

“Yes, I am.”

“And you found out about this interrogation from Coulson?”

“Not really, I kinda just guessed.”

“Oh, you guessed?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“So when you _guessed_ where Agent Romanoff was you decided the best course of action was to break into the most secure wing of the SHIELD base?”

“Naturally, yeah.” Fury looked like he was about to explode, Clint had that effect on him. 

“And you did this using an access card that you stole from your handler?”

“Well, I wouldn’t really call it stealing. It was more like borrowing.”

“Borrowing implies the intention of giving it back.” Fury pointed out. 

“It was going to get back to him someday.” Clint shot back with a shrug. 

“I swear, you two are going to be the death of me. Neither of you can take orders and neither of you can follow a goddamn rule to save your life. I’m of a mind to suspend the both of you from active missions until you can learn to follow basic orders.” Clint didn’t really expect this to go well, but suspension seemed a little harsh for what he’d done. Especially considering nothing changed. 

“However,” Fury continued. “You may be able to redeem yourself Agent Barton.” Okay, Clint really didn’t like the sound of that. 

“How?” The apprehension was clear in his voice. 

“Tell me about Agent Romanoff.” 

“What?”

“I know she hasn’t told any of us the truth about her. I’m betting you’re the closest thing she has to a friend and you’d know more about her than anyone. I want to know who I took on five years ago and who I risked my job for.”

“Well, she’s a Leo and a vegetarian. And after that interrogation I’m beginning to understand why she doesn’t eat meat. Uhh...she prefers cats to dogs. And, oh! She’s big into cocktails. And she only drinks beer if it’s craft beer. Though she owns like a $400 bottle of wine.”

“Barton, I’m being serious.” Clint could hear the warning in his voice but steadfastly ignored it, he was having too much fun with this. 

“She drinks her coffee black. And she only sleeps on her left side. Let’s see...what else? She can play the piano, and the cello as well as being trained in classical ballet. She can make a mean mojito, if you’re interested.”

“You are hear by suspended from active duty missions until further notice, Barton. You are reassigned to Archives until further notice.” Fury sat back in his chair with that smug look on his face that always made Clint want to punch him.

“There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know, Fury. Honestly, she’s not as difficult as you make her out to be.” 

“What do you know about her past?”

“Honestly, not that much. She’s told me a few things, but always in the vaguest of details and without names. We don’t really talk about it, and it doesn’t come up as often as you’d think. Plus the last time I pressed the issue she nearly stabbed me.”

“Do we have any reason to doubt her loyalties?” Okay, so _that’s_ the reason that Fury wanted to talk to him. 

“I trust Natasha completely.” He told him with the same dead-seriousness that Fury always had with him, and it was the God’s-honest truth. 

“You’re excused, Barton.” Fury dismissed him brusquely, still seeming dissatisfied with the answer he was given, but he also knew that was all he was going to get. 

“Am I still suspended?” Clint asked as he got up to leave. 

“I’ll think about it. Now, get out of my office. Coulson tells me you have some paperwork to do.” Fury smirked as Clint rolled his eyes in frustration, leaving the office in a bit of a huff about the whole thing. He understood why Fury had new reservations about Natasha. After all that Russia business she could easily have turned her cloak again for the Russians, but he still didn’t enjoy being used as an informant of Natasha. Even if it was for security purposes. He shrugged, putting the whole thing out of his mind as he lugged both boxes out to his car and made his way home. 

Meanwhile, Natasha was being used for a new recruit training demonstration. Coulson had her pitted against several of the bigger SHIELD agents and the recruits watched as, one by one, the men crumbled beneath her. They all knew what Natasha was capable of going into this, maybe that was part of the reason they’d agreed to it, but their planet-sized male egos still left them upset with Natasha’s victories. 

“Agent Romanoff, care to describe to our recruits your fighting style?” Coulson prompted once the mat had been cleared of her last victim. 

“It’s all physics really. Fighting most of the time isn’t about brute strength because it’s slow and wastes energy. Instead, it’s more about leverage. Angles, velocity, gravity, and all that mixed with an innate knowledge of the human body and it’s weakness all combine to create a more streamlined, energy-efficient mean of fighting.” She explained casually as pulled the tape off her hands. 

“How on earth do you do that flying-scissor-head thing?” Asked one of the males of the group who looked very confused by the whole thing. 

“It’s actually a relatively simple take-down move once you master it. It’s taken years of practice though to cultivate and master this more unique fighting style. Am I good for today, Coulson?”

“Yes. Thank you for the demonstration, you’re free to go.” Coulson was surprised that Natasha had been so easygoing about this whole thing. Normally he fought her tooth and nail over everything, but not recently. Something about her had changed, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. 

Natasha liked the new recruits. Well, she didn’t hate them and she preferred them to a lot of the older agents. In the five years that she’d been here, most of the field agents that had been working here when she had been brought in had died or been reassigned. Few people who really knew about how she ended up at SHIELD remained, as a result, she’d kind of become a legend around here and most recruits were too afraid to talk to her, which suited her just fine. She was admired and idolized and feared and it felt kind of good. 

She didn’t bother to shower or change, simply pulling a mildly ratty t-shirt on over her sports bra and lacing up a pair of running shoes. She grabbed her keys out of the baby pocket of her running and tossed them in her purse with her wallet and phone before pulling her hair out of it’s messy ponytail as she left the building. 

She stopped and grabbed some chinese takeout from Clint’s local joint on her way to his apartment, only realizing how hungry she was when finally alone in her car. Natasha had only been to Clint’s apartment a handful of times, he mostly came over to hers, but she let herself in and made her way up to the sixth floor where Natasha would silently curse the fact that he lived in a nicer place than she did and here people actually, you know, spoke to each other in the hallways. 

“Hi, how are you?” Natasha’s head snapped up at the too peppy greeting. She found herself face to face with a short but slender woman in scrubs. Her skin was tanned, but it was more like she spent a lot of time outdoors than having a naturally tan complexion and it seemed to clash a little with her dark honey-colored hair and her dark brown, almost black eyes. She had a round face with a sort of squished face, like her features were just _slightly_ too small for the rest of her face, but it wan’t really unattractive either. It was her smile that made Natasha look on with apprehension. Or maybe it was the vaguely plasticine vibe she gave off standing there with a barbie sized smile on her face for a complete stranger. 

“Uhh, fine. How about you?” Natasha hated this pointless smalltalk that society basically required of people. 

“I’m excellent. And, I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you. Are you new here?” Natasha hated weirdly personal questions even more than the smalltalk. 

“No, I’m just visiting a friend.” She replied without enthusiasm, tying to maneuver out of this conversation. 

“Oh, really? Who?” Okay, now this was too close for comfort. 

“You know, I’m actually running late so I should really be going.” She shifted the brown paper bag from one arm to the other as she walked around this woman, feeling grateful when Clint’s door opened and his blonde head poked curiously out the door. 

“I thought that was you.” He said, opening his door wider and Natasha let the relief show on her face. 

“I brought food.” She held up the bag and let him usher her inside, not even glancing at the other woman in the hall as he closed the door behind them. 

“Okay, is is just me or was that chick kinda creepy?” Natasha asked, setting the bag down on the counter and pulling out the little square containers. 

“Beth? Yeah, she’s not quite right. But, I don’t really socialize with these people too much. They all ask too many questions.” He shrugged, picking up a pair of chopsticks and breaking the wooden connector before opening up a container of white rice. 

They ate quickly, talking about nothing of importance until they both decided it was time to face the music and begin cracking down on that paperwork. Clint poured two mugs full of hot coffee and they began to work in earnest with Clint sprawled on the couch while Natasha was cross-legged on the floor ben over his coffee table. Nothing but the shuffling of papers and the scratching of pens were heard except for the occasional coffee refill, but after about 4 hours Clint stopped refilling his cup altogether and just drank straight out of the pot. When they were finished it was about four in the morning.

“Victory is ours!” Clint exclaimed, throwing his hands up when he had signed the bottom of the last sheet of paper. By now both their handwriting looked more or less like drunken chicken scratch but neither of them could even be bothered to care as they were finally able to relax. 

“You’re such a dork.” Natasha teased, flicking her pen at him.

“Don’t bring me down, Tasha. I feel good about this.” 

“It’s four in the fucking morning, how can you possibly feel good about this?”

“We’re done. It’s exciting.”

“Whatever makes you happy, but I should really get going.”

“Or you could stay.” He suggested, reaching forward and tugged her up and over his coffee table onto the couch next to him, not caring that Natasha had to step on it in the process. 

“I’m exhausted, Clint. I just want to sleep.” 

“Nat, I don’t know if you know this, but I actually have a bed here.” She gave him a playful hit in the chest. 

“I’m in sweaty gross workout clothes that I’d rather not sleep in.” Clint only shrugged at her excuse. 

“You can wear something of mine.” He countered again and Natasha sighed. “C’mon, I’ll even make you breakfast in the morning.” 

“Only if you make pancakes.” 

“Deal.” 

Natasha got up and rummaged through her purse until she pulled out a toothbrush, shrugging when Clint raised an eyebrow at her. 

“I like clean teeth.” She explained as she went off to go brush her teeth and wash her face. When she came out of the bathroom Clint handed her a plain grey t-shirt. He didn’t even bother to look away from her as she lazily undressed until she was in nothing but her panties before pulling the shirt on over her head. Clint had changed too so now he wore only a pair or navy sweatpants; he liked to sleep shirtless. 

Natasha settled into bed, curling up on her side with her left arm under her head, staring blankly at the wall while Clint stretch out on his back, shutting the light off a few moments later. The rhythmic sound of their breathing was the only sound in the room until Natasha, in her own restlessness, spoke up. 

“Hey, give me your hand.” She said, as she turned her head to look back at Clint and held up her right hand, her body still turned away from him.  He looked over at her and placed his left hand palm-down in hers. 

“Your other hand.” She clarified and he switched hands. Clint felt a slight tug on his arm, rolling onto his side as Natasha wrapped his hand over her waist, letting it come to rest flat against her stomach with her hand placed gently over the top of his. In response he reached just a little bit further, slipping his hand underneath her waist, and pulled her flush against his chest. 

Natasha, with some measure of will, let herself relax. Let herself be encompassed by her partner, let her head fall back against her shoulder, let his hand slip under her shirt to rest against her skin, let their legs intertwine beneath the blanket together. 

It’s not like this was her first time sharing a bed with someone. In fact, it was really more like the opposite. But, this was something new for her, for him too. 

She’d played the call girl, the prostitute, the blushing schoolgirl, the trophy girlfriend, the fianceé, even the wife. She’d played the obedient recruit too, but never herself, never Natasha. She spent so long burying herself under layers and layers of things that just weren’t her to survive that she’d forgotten what having relationships simply for the sake of connecting with another human being for no other reason than desire, felt like. Maybe she never knew before. 

But there was Clint. She didn’t really quite understand him, she couldn’t quite read him as well as she could read other people, and she didn’t quite trust him. To clarify, in a mission, in a firefight, she wouldn’t choose anybody else, but with her own past, with her own secrets, she’d rather keep that to herself. Though that’s more of a reflection of her than of him. 

He was different, to put it simply. With any other person, in her experience, male or female, this situation would have some pretty strong implications. But with Clint, Natasha felt no pressure to do anything she didn’t want, to be anything she didn’t want. There were no demands or even expectations for anything more than what she was giving. She was just herself, exactly as she wanted to be. 

It took her five years to accept him and to feel accepted by him. Five years to realize that she wanted him. Wanted him as her partner, as her lifeline, as her friend. Wanted his stupid jokes and his bad driving and his no-holds-barred sparing with her. Wanted his hands against her skin and in her hair. Wanted his lips against hers, his whole body against hers.  

There was fear behind her desire. 

Fear of trust. 

Fear of what it all might mean. 

Fear of the unknown.

Natasha felt exhausted in every inch of her body, right down to her bones. And, for the moment, she let her emotions was away, losing herself in the physical sensations around her as they both drifted asleep. 

 

 


End file.
